Many bulk products are shipped by rail. Numerous bulk products, in particular grain-derived products, are shipped in rail hopper cars. Conventionally, a hopper car has at least one gravity-fed hopper, and typically three or four hoppers, positioned at the lower vertical extremity of the container portion of the rail car. Each hopper terminates in a gated aperture. In use, bulk material is introduced to the rail car for shipment. When the rail car has reached its destination, the gates of the hoppers are opened to allow the bulk material contained within the rail car to be released.
Many bulk products, in particular grain-derived products, will harden or “set up” during transport. In such event, the bulk material will not be present in a loose aggregate form suitable for release through the hopper, but instead will be in the form of a solid cohesive mass that will require manual breakup in order to be released. This problem is both inconvenient and dangerous. For the rail car worker, it can be time consuming and dangerous to enter a rail car to breakup the solidified bulk material, particularly when the material is a toxic product, such as a fertilizer. For the shipper of the material, the quality or choice of formulation of the material can be limited by set up concerns. For instance, shippers of corn gluten feed typically choose to limit the amount of sugar in the bulk shipment, because it is known that sugar will contribute to the set up phenomenon.
A general object of the present invention is to provide, in one embodiment, a method and in another embodiment, an assembly, that mitigates against the foregoing problem.